Baseball

More Dash Than Bash
With a retooled lineup that relies on speed and defense over power, the Rockies are rising

A few weeks into spring training, Rockies manager Buddy Bell introduced a drill to his troops. He would send his players to their positions, stand at home plate with a fungo bat and, with a couple of minor leaguers running the bases, lash the ball all over the field while shouting situations such as, "First and third, one out!" Standard spring stuff, but with one big catch: The drill didn't end until the fielders made 27 straight outs without committing an error, including mental miscues. Shortstop boots a ground ball? The out count reverted to zero. Cutoff man missed? Back to zero. "Oh, that was the worst," says second baseman Mike Lansing. "It was hard. We'd be out there for hours in the heat, cursing him."

"We were in the middle of it one day, and the players were saying, 'Hey, the game starts in 45 minutes,' " says third base coach Rich Donnelly. "Buddy said, 'I don't care when the game starts, we're staying here till you get it right.' We skipped batting practice to finish the drill."

Thus did the Rockies receive their indoctrination in Buddy Ball, the reinvention of the team that began in October when new general manager Dan O'Dowd started his purge of all but 10 of the 25 players from the 1999 Opening Day roster. Gone were slow-footed, stone-gloved mashers like Dante Bichette and Vinny Castilla; brought in was a sleeker team built around speed and defense rather than beer league power.

The new assemblage has jelled faster than even O'Dowd could have hoped. Despite hitting the second-fewest home runs in the National League, Colorado was the league's highest-scoring team (6.3 runs per game) through Sunday. Though they dropped two of three games to the Diamondbacks over the weekend, the Rockies trailed National League West leader Arizona by just two games. The surge has been fueled by aspects of the game—stolen bases, timely hitting, solid defense—rarely seen in Denver before this year. A season after attempting the second-fewest stolen bases (113) in the league, the Rockies, with 97 attempts and 70 steals, were the second-most larcenous team. The Rockies were also the third-best fielding team, and the Colorado pitching staff, which last year issued a league-record 737 walks, had allowed only 235, the league's second-lowest total. "This is the kind of game we needed," says Larry Walker, who moved from rightfield to left after returning on June 9 from an injured right elbow that caused him to miss 23 games. "Waiting around for somebody to hit a home run wasn't working."

Bell should frame the scorecard from last Saturday's game when the Go-Go Rockies, despite getting just one extra-base hit, handed Randy Johnson his second loss of the season, 4-0. Three of Colorado's runs were set up by stolen bases, including one by pitcher Masato Yoshii, who swiped second in the fifth inning on a failed hit-and-run attempt. Speed was responsible for the other score as well: Centerfielder Tom Goodwin, the league leader with 33 steals, took off for third two pitches after knocking in Yoshii with a double. Arizona third baseman Craig Counsell mishandled the throw for an error, and Goodwin galloped home as the ball trickled into leftfield. Add a handful of sparkling catches by Goodwin and rightfielder Jeffrey Hammonds and solid infield defense, and the result was a textbook win.

"That was as good as it gets," said Bell, thrilled especially because his team, which was 25-8 at Coors but 14-23 on the road, had won away from home. "We have to do that—play with a lot of energy and be disruptive to manufacture runs."

The approach seems odd for a team that plays half its games at Coors Field, where, over the past five seasons more home runs have been hit than in any other National League park, but Bell has the Rockies buying into it. "We're all on the same page," says Walker. Is that unity different from last season? "Much different."

It may have been Walker's injury that helped pull everyone together. After his last game before going on the disabled list in early May, the Rockies were stumbling along with a 15-18 record, 8� games behind Arizona. Several players got together to discuss how they should handle Walker's absence. The verdict: Concentrate on the little things—moving runners over, playing sound defense—to manufacture runs and prevent the other team from scoring. "We just said, 'O.K., our main guy is hurt, let's make sure we stick together,' " says Lansing.

They did. Led by Goodwin, who hit .354 and went wild on the bases with 19 steals, and Hammonds, who hit eight homers and drove in 32 runs, Colorado went 16-7 without Walker and made up six games in the standings. "Watching Goody steal bags, guys taking extra bases, this is fun," says first baseman Todd Helton, who led the league in hitting at week's end with a .376 average. "I enjoy watching that type of baseball."